Liberating a key Iraqi city from ISIS was 'a victory in the worst possible sense'

A
member of the Iraqi security forces stands guard with his weapon
at Camp Habbaniyah, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi,
Iraq March 12, 2015.REUTERS/Alaa
Al-Marjani

The US has been touting the liberation of the city of Ramadi from
the terrorist group ISIS
as a major victory for Iraqi forces, but one former US
official in Iraq has a less-rosy view of the operation.

Ali Khedery is the longest continually serving US official in
Iraq, and he worked for US ambassadors and heads of US
Central Command.

In an interview with Business Insider, he pointed out that Ramadi
was largely destroyed in the battle to liberate it. And with
Iraq's crippled economy, it's unclear how the country will rebuild.

"Ramadi I think was a victory in the worst possible sense in that
… there really wasn’t much left of Ramadi by the time it had been
deemed 'liberated,'" Khedery told Business Insider. "This seems
like the 100th battle for Ramadi since 2003."

Officials estimate that about 80% of Ramadi was destroyed in the fighting.
Some of this damage was intentionally inflicted by ISIS (also
known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) to ensure that life
could not return to normal once the militants left.

"Between all those different types of battles, [Ramadi] was a
shadow of its former self even before the most recent campaign,
but now certainly between the ISIS booby traps and the airstrikes
by the coalition and the militias' mass shelling and the Iraqi
military assault, there is basically nothing left," Khedery said
of Ramadi.

The United Nations Development Programme is still waiting for
approval to go into Ramadi to start making it habitable again,
according to Reuters. The non-profit organization reportedly
has 100 generators and mobile-electrical grids ready to power to
city once it is to go into the area.

But for now, thousands of displaced Ramadi residents aren't
allowed to come back.

Erin Cunningham, a Middle East correspondent for The Washington
Post, has been documenting post-ISIS Ramadi on her Instagram
account. Her photos show a ghost city filled with rubble:

It's unclear from where this money will come — The Wall Street
Journal
noted that falling oil prices have shrunken Iraq's revenue
and that the country's parliament just passed a budget with a
$20-billion deficit. Other governments have pledged funding for
rebuilding Iraq, but it's not enough to cover the work that will
be needed.

"[Iraq is] getting somewhere around $27, $28 a barrel for their
crude, which is a quarter of what it was last summer, so that’s
going to be a really big problem … because the government depends
on oil revenues for roughly 95% of their budget," Khedery said.

He continued: "So there’s no money for infrastructure like power
generation, oil-field development, and roads, and there’s no
money for the subsidies … plus Baghdad has to pay for soldiers,
for bullets, and they have to pay salaries."

This lack of opportunity for residents of cities that have been
nearly leveled by fighting could turn some toward ISIS, which is
known to pay fighters high salaries.

"The population [of Ramadi] is somewhere around 500,000," Khedery
said. "That’s 500,000 people with no jobs, nowhere to live, no
economy. And if even only 2% of those people join ISIS, that’s
10,000 fighters for them."

Even US officials are couching their optimistic statements with
caveats — Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe
Dunford said this weekend that while Iraqis "now have the
momentum" in the fight to reclaim cities from ISIS, he admitted
that liberating Ramadi did not mark a turning point for Iraqi
forces.